News

June 16, 2015

Toyota Research Team Reports Critical Advance in Electrolytes for Magnesium Batteries

Still looking for a replacement for lithium? How about magnesium? It’s divalent, so it can displace double the charge per ion (i.e., Mg2+ rather than Li+). It’s much more abundant than lithium, and more stable. However, researchers investigating Mg-ion batteries have run into several limitations, including anode/electrolyte incompatibility. Now a […]
June 15, 2015

Chinese Battery-Maker Orders Separion Ceramic Composite Separators From Electrovaya

Canadian manufacturer Electrovaya has announced a major order for its Separion ceramic composite separators from an unnamed Chinese battery company. Electrovaya acquired the Separion intellectual property from a company called Evonik in April. According to Electrovaya, most cells made with a graphite anode and a Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) cathode […]
June 11, 2015

Skeleton Technologies Raises €9.8 Million in Series B, Aims to Make Ultracapacitors the Future for EVs

Estonian/German ultracapacitor maker Skeleton Technologies has raised Series B financing of €9.8 million ($10.7 million) from a consortium that includes electrical equipment manufacturer Harju Elekter Group and Baltic investment firm UP Invest. The company plans to use the funds to ramp up production of its graphene-based ultracapacitors. Customers include hybrid […]
June 7, 2015

Navy Develops Electric Gun Powered by K2’s Li-ion Batteries

It’s not just cars that are getting electrified – guns may be going high-tech as well. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has ordered a battery system from K2 Energy Solutions to be used in an electromagnetic rail gun, part of an $81,400,000 contract. Rail gun technology uses electromagnetic energy […]
June 5, 2015

Chemists Discover Key Reaction in Sodium-Oxygen Batteries

Chemists at Canada’s University of Waterloo have described a key mediation pathway that explains why sodium-oxygen batteries are more energy-efficient compared with their lithium-oxygen counterparts. “Our new understanding brings together a lot of different, disconnected bits of a puzzle that have allowed us to assemble the full picture,” says Professor […]
June 2, 2015

Mercedes To Offer Home Energy Storage

Like Tesla, Daimler will start offering energy storage solutions, according to recent reports. They will be commercially available in September. In 2009, Daimler founded the subsidiary ACCUmotive to develop lithium-ion batteries for its plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles, and smart vehicles. Since then, solar power costs have decreased and the energy […]
May 21, 2015

E-bike Demonstrates the Potential of Sodium-Ion Batteries

The British firm Faradion is working on sodium-ion batteries, which show promise as a successor to Li-ion technology. In collaboration with Williams Advanced Engineering, which provided batteries for the Formula E electric race car, Faradion has built a sodium-ion-powered electric bike to prove the concept. Sodium-ion intercalation batteries use the […]
May 20, 2015

ORNL Breakthrough Could Enable Wider Application of Graphene Composites

Graphene, a two-dimensional hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms, has great potential in a number of EV-related applications, including anodes, lithium-sulfur batteries and ultracapacitors. With current technology, however, it’s impractical to use on a large scale, and researchers have been limited to using small flakes of the material. Now a team […]
May 20, 2015

Apple and A123 Settle Engineer-Poaching Lawsuit

The iCar is still just a rumor, but Apple surely has been showing a lot of interest in EV-related technology, including large-format batteries. This week, the Cupertino computer-maker agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging that it had been showing a little too much interest in engineers working for Massachusetts battery-maker […]
May 18, 2015

Battery Degradation Level In Tesla Model S Only 5% After 30,000 Miles?

The Tesla Model S looks to be on track to match (at the least) the battery longevity performance of the Roadster, based on a recent survey of 80 European Model S owners. While you might be saying, “well, 80 owners isn’t much of a data pool,” it’s all that we’ve […]
May 15, 2015

LG Chem Power CEO: We’re the Li-ion Leader for PEVs Because of Material Science

Q&A with LG Chem Power’s CEO: Dr. Prabhakar Patil on how the company became a Li-ion battery front-runner, the economics of building batteries, and why it spends little energy on what comes after lithium. Among Tier 1 automotive suppliers of lithium-ion cells, LG Chem is off to a clear lead, based […]
May 1, 2015

Tesla’s Home Battery Offering In Context — Pricing Much Lower Than Expected

think one of the lessons of the day is to trust Elon Musk. When he said approximately a month ago that Tesla would be announcing a “major new product line” on April 30, he wasn’t using the term “major” in a light way. [Full Disclosure: I’m long (very long) TSLA.] […]